High resolution x-ray imaging systems, also known as X-ray imaging microscopes (“XRM”), provide high-resolution/high magnification, non-destructive imaging of internal structures in samples for a variety of industrial and research applications, such as materials science, clinical research, and failure analysis to list a few examples. XRMs provide the ability to visualize features in samples without the need to cut and slice the samples.
XRMs are often used to perform computed tomography (“CT”) scans of samples. CT scanning is the process of generating three dimensional tomographic volumes of the samples from a series of projections at different angles. XRMs often present these tomographic volumes in two-dimensional, cross-sectional images or “slices” of the three dimensional tomographic volume data set. The tomographic volumes are generated from the projection data using software reconstruction algorithms based on back-projection and other image processing techniques to reveal and analyze features within the samples. U.S. Pat. No. 9,128,584, entitled Multi Energy X-Ray Microscope Data Acquisition and Image Reconstruction System and Method, discloses such an XRM system for optimizing the image contrast of a sample and is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety.
Dual energy contrast tuning tools have been developed for XRMs. One such example is described in U.S. Pat. Appl. Pub. No. US 2014/0233692 A1, which is incorporated herein in its entirety by this reference.